how long does it take to get your taste buds back after chemo

Many of these studies involved “whole mouth” experiments that may not have detected regional damage to the taste buds at the front of the tongue or to the chorda tympani section of the facial nerve, said graduate student Raul Alfaro, the lead author of the study. Prior studies that explored taste loss and perception in these patients showed mixed results. “Taste buds’ average lifespan of about 10 days enables rapid recovery from injury if the stem cells are preserved, yet it also makes the short-lived and long-lived cells within taste buds particularly vulnerable to the direct cytotoxic and anti-proliferative effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy,” Pepino said. While undergoing radiation and/or chemotherapy, head and neck cancer patients may lose taste buds, triggering a transient reduction in their ability to taste – a condition called hypogeusia – or their perception of tastes may be altered, a condition called dysgeusia that can also occur when nerves are damaged during cancer surgery, she said.

“Our primary goal in this study was to test the hypothesis that radiation therapy is associated with long-term alterations in patients’ senses of smell and taste.”Īlign image left align image center align image right Yanina Pepino, a professor of food science and human nutrition at the U. “While most studies suggest that patients’ ability to taste recovers within a few months of treatment, patients report that they continue to experience taste dysfunction for years after treatment ends,” said M. team said this diminished taste sensitivity suggested that the taste buds on the front two-thirds of the cancer survivors’ tongues or a branch of the chorda tympani facial nerve, which carries signals from the tip of the tongue to the brain, may have been damaged during radiation therapy.

In a paper published in the journal Chemical Senses, the U. In a study of taste and smell dysfunction with 40 cancer survivors, scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that the tips of these individuals’ tongues were significantly less sensitive to bitter, salty or sweet tastes than peers in the control group who had never been diagnosed with cancer. Most survivors of squamous cell head and neck cancers report that their sense of taste is dulled, changed or lost during radiation treatment, causing them to lose interest in eating and diminishing their quality of life.

How long does it take to get your taste buds back after chemo